Website – all new look!

Early in December I mentioned that I was planning on giving my website a complete overhaul – and I’m pleased to say that it is now complete. Away from this blog I have been quietly working on, what turned out to be, a rather challenging monochrome project as a way of broadening my photographic horizons – and it certainly achieved that. I have found that I’m looking at things around me in a totally different way and have finally realised that the creation of B&W images is where my photographic heart really lies. My website now reflects that with the great majority of images now in monochrome – a selection of colour images have been moved to the Galleries section of this blog and there are links between both blog and website for easy navigation. The current cover image of my website is my favourite winter photograph of last year …. and is probably the most snow I’m going to see this winter in what is generally a grey and soggy southern England! There are many images that have not featured in this blog so please, take a look, and let me know what you think.

Congratulations, Noeline, your site looks very good. The monochrome format gives it a definite feel and mood which suits that core of your work. Very good to have your blog running alongside it. I look forward to seeing it develop and flourish!

I’ve been thinking of doing something similar myself i.e. keeping my WP blog as my photostream where I post images of anything and everything that takes my fancy and then setting up a new site which showcases my best work and offers some for sale. Not sure what’s the best way to go with the new site/sales though. I see you have an A3 printer and process the orders yourself – how is that working out?

It’s actually a large format printer capable of phenomenal resolutions – and it’s not mine!
Having tried home prints on, what I thought, was a decent printer and a few on line places I finally found a professional printer about 1/2 hour drive away, The detail and tonal range is incredible and it was only seeing a ‘proper’ print that I realised how poor the other offerings were. If your serious about providing good quality images that do justice to your photos then it’s a route I’d definitely recommend.
As for processing orders – well, I’m not exactly rushed off my feet! I’ve sold a few, but to be honest, I haven’t made any effort to ‘sell’ myself and I don’t want to get involved with cards etc. that sell more readily – too much admin required there!
Good luck with it if you follow the idea through and please, if you think I might be able to help, don’t hesitate to ask.

I love the look of your new site Noeline! That picture is one of my favourites too. It would be nice to get a cold snap, banish all this grey wet weather, so much water everywhere. A drive without glare and spray would be nice. Will we every dry out? I wish you all the very best with the new site and this new direction. :)

Thanks Adrian ….. and oh for some frost or snow ….
By the way, I’ve been having a good old rummage around your own website over the past couple of months. Fabulous pictures of course! It’s obviously very different to mine but I really like the way you have included a ‘story’ behind your pictures. I guess that’s one of the luxuries of learning HTML!

Thank you Noeline. One of the luxuries maybe but I found using html meant enormous headaches and hair pulling frustration. it’s nice to be able to use a template. Placing items on a page with html and css is still a bit of a mystery to me but I get there somehow. Do you have access to the coding on your site or is it hidden by your service provider as it is with WordPress.com? If you can access the code, I can tell how to annotate your pictures quite easily. :)

Ha – that’s why I’ve avoided going down the HTML route for now :D
I think the coding is hidden – or, at least I presume it is?? I may be able to access it by upgrading but even then I’m not sure? It’s a good point though – and a great offer! I’ll have a look and see if I can find out – all this ‘webbery’ stuff is a bit beyond me!!
I really do appreciate your generous offer so look out – I might be able take you up on it :D

The new website looks brilliant and your galleries have some very special images! I’m also started to lean more and more towards black & white – as you say, you start seeing the world that way. I look forward to seeing more of your great work :)

I am delighted with your gallery and level of art you mastered Noeline. You have a talent and determination to make it even better. Web site is expected design of the artist (monochrome colour, focus on art, etc). How about you personalise your site. Put you photo with nice smile and welcome your customers. People buy the art if they like its expression, but also if they like an artist. Also, some basic comments for each photo could get potential customers to get interested. Of course this is just my opinion that might be true or not. Just felt to make you think about that.

Thank you very much for your lovely feedback and good suggestions Esad.
As for my my mugshot – well, that’s already on the ‘about’ page – I don’t want to put people off by having it on the ‘home’ page!
I like the idea of adding a little more information about each photo but at the moment am limited by the site software I’m using. I haven’t learned HTML (yet!) so am having to do the best I can with template based offerings. I’ll keep trying to see if there’s some way I can make it work.

It looks beautiful and i love your galleries, very well done!
You´re very creative photography-wise but also in website design, non-conventional naming of galleries, love it!
Keep it up, greetings, Ron.

Howdy just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your post seem to be running off the screen in
Firefox. I’m not sure if this is a format issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I
figured I’d post to let you know. The design and style look great though!
Hope you get the issue fixed soon. Cheers

Great – thanks very much for letting me know about the problem. I’ll fire up Firefox and see if I can work it out – all this compatibility stuff is a real pain!
I’m glad you like the concept and really do appreciate the heads up. Thank you.

The new website and your monochrome work is amazing. I think the image “Whitelines” is brilliant. I’m glad you set up the colour galleries too. I love the atmosphere of your new website but can’t help but think you need to do the same for your colour images. So many excellent images in your galleries. I hope to set something up like this in the future. A lot of hard work and tough decisions, well done Noeline.

Thanks for taking a look and letting me know what you think – much appreciated!
Until this revamp my website had a bit of everything but it looked too chaotic. Although I’m still pretty ‘chaotic’ with my photographic interests, these days I feel more strongly about B&W so it made sense to rationalise things a bit. Your comment has made me think further though so maybe I should consider having a ‘twin’ website that concentrates on colour images only …
It took a bit of time but using a template based site to start with makes it a lot easier. I was also quite ruthless when selecting images as I wanted this to be a ‘showcase’ – tough decisions as you say!

PS. I’m glad to hear that you like ‘Whitelines’ – it’s one of my favourites too! It’s a deceptively simple image and I was pleased at how I managed to work it through from the initial concept.